This invention relates generally to retrieving information over a computer network and, more particularly, to retrieving information over a computer network by selecting an object included within an electronic document.
The Internet is an electronic communications network that connects computer networks and organizational computer facilities around the world. As the Internet has evolved and matured over the years, the use of it by most users has settled into predictable patterns. More specifically, a variety of web sites on the Internet have evolved over the years that can be used to perform specific functions for users. A typical user may use a set of just a few web sites on the Internet to accomplish the majority of their online tasks. These web sites have evolved based on the predictable patterns of Internet users. The tasks performed by these users range from a “Perform a Search” on a particular word and/or phrase to get more information to buy a particular book from Amazon.com® or to rent a movie from Netflix.com® (Amazon.com is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc., South Seattle, Wash.; and NetFlix.com is a registered trademark of NetFlix.com, Inc., Los Gatos, Calif.).
While in many cases the impetus to perform one of these tasks may come from a source outside of a user's personal computer, for example hearing about an interesting book during a conversation with a friend, in many other cases, the impetus comes in the form of a web page, an email or other computer readable document. Although it would seem on the surface that in the latter case it would be much easier to perform a desired task, like buying a book whose title appears in an article that someone was reading online, this is rarely the case.
A current limitation of web pages, emails and other electronic documents as they currently exist is that unless the author/designer of the document has explicitly created a link for a particular piece of text or other graphically displayed object, that object can not be used as a link to a web site through which a task can be performed.
For example, if a title of a book appears in an article that a user is reading on a web page and it was not specifically linked to Amazon.com®, the user would likely have to undertake the following steps to purchase the book: select and “copy” the book title from the web page; open a new browser window; navigate to the Amazon.com® (or other online book vendor) web site; paste the book title into the search field on the Amazon.com® home page; click the “Search” button; and click the “Purchase with One-click” button on the resulting web page.
In the example described above, the designer of the web page could have designed the web page such that the title of the book was a link to a web page for buying the book. However, web page designers typically do not include such links unless the web page designer has a particular commercial interest in promoting the sale of books and collecting a fee for enabling the sale of the book. Furthermore, even if the web page designer had designed the web page such that a mentioned book could be easily bought, the user would be limited to using the vendor that had been selected by the web page designer. The user might prefer to buy their books from another vendor, for example, Barnes and Noble® (Barnes and Noble is a registered trademark of Barnes & Noble Bookstores, Inc., New York, N.Y.). Furthermore, in the example above, the user may not want to buy the book, but rather may want to perform a Google® search on the title of the book to find a review of it (Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc., Mountain View, Calif.).
Electronic documents, as currently designed and implemented, present text and graphics on a page, but are limited to imbuing particular objects with exactly zero or one hyperlink. It is only in a relatively few number of cases wherein the web designer can reliably predict what a user might want to use such a link for, and even a fewer number of cases wherein the web designer knows from which vendor the user might wish to request such services as might be provided via that link.
There is commercially available software that allows a user to click on a word and see a translation of the word into a second language. Such commercially available software packages include: TechnoCraft's RoboWord, Mashov Software's Babylon, and Accent Software's WordPoint (RoboWord is commercially available through TechnoCraft Co., Ltd, Tokyo, Japan; Babylon is commercially available through Mashov Computers Ltd, Israel; and WordPoint is commercially available through Accent Software International, Ltd., Israel). In these software packages, one or more electronic dictionaries are provided and are stored on the user's computer such that the user can click on a word and see a translation of the word into a second language. However, none of these software packages enable a user to select a word within an electronic document and link to a selected web site.
Other commercially available software packages, for example Connect Innovation's software package FlySwat®, looks at text downloaded by the browser and continually accesses and displays data from and hyperlinks to other web sites deemed relevant by FlySwat® (FlySwat is a registered trademark of flyswat, Inc., San Francisco, Calif.). However, none of these software packages enable a user to select a word within an electronic document and link to a user-selected web site.
Other commercially available software packages, for example GuruNet, enables a user to click on a word and retrieve a web page from the GuruNet server that provides information from the GuruNet proprietary database related to that word (GuruNet is commercially available through Atomica Corporation, Wesley Hills, N.Y.). However, none of these software packages enable a user to select a word within an electronic document and link to a user-selected web site on the Internet.